LINGUISTICS AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
This study takes an integrated discourse-cognitive approach to the analysis of contextual factors that motivate conceptual evolution of metaphorical frames in economic discourse. In contrast to looking at conceptual metaphor models in isolation or out of context, doing metaphor research from the perspective of contextual factors gives insight into the motivation of metaphor choice and origins of conceptual evolution as well as facilitates understanding and interpretation of metaphorical meaning construction. The evolutionary aspects of metaphorical frames in extra linguistic context of economic discourse have not been thoroughly covered in Russian research literature. This paper attempts to identify some contextual effects on metaphorical framing in economic discourse and analyze some examples evidencing the importance of discourse-cognitive approach for metaphorical frames evolution research. The theoretical framework of this study is formed by the groundbreaking theories of conceptual metaphor, metaphorical framing, conceptual evolution and abundant research examining metaphor dynamics in different types of discourse. The empirical data gleaned and analyzed in this paper indicate the dynamic variation of metaphorical frames motivated by the social context of economic discourse production.
The article presents the analysis of the texts of the Portuguese diplomatic discourse (congratulatory telegrams, welcome notes, protocol and ceremonial documents, etc.) from the point of view of means serving to create a positive image of the country. Linguistic and conceptual analyses are carried out; the basic tools of forming a conceptual field of the text are defined. Words and expressions representing the concepts of “Amizade” (“Friendship”), “Povo” (“People”), and “Confiança” (“Trust”) are seen as the basic means used to create a positive image. The concept of “Amizade” (“Friendship”) is the main concept accounting for the image’s linguocultural structure, linking together all the other concepts. It helps the Portuguese diplomats to form an image of Portugal as a community of friendly people. As a result, Portugal is seen as a friendly country towards all international actors, ready to demonstrate confidence and to improve relations at the collective and individual level. The article concludes that translator or interpreter while making his or her translation should take into account the conceptual structure of the text as part of the diplomatic discourse to convey most accurately the culturally significant meanings of the text.
This work is devoted to the study of one of the means of actualization of the precedent situation in the Spanish language on the materials of journalism. It examines the verbs formed from the names with the productive causative suffix values -izar, and also their derivatives – a gerund, indicating the action, and nouns with the suffix -ción, expressing the action and result of action – value motivational framework.
These means are derived from the names of countries and regions, where in certain periods of their history there have occurred certain events, which served as the basis for the emergence of new words denoting phenomena and processes, characteristic not only of these countries, but also in other regions of the world.
In contrast to the dictionary definitions of the nuclear meaning of these derivatives, their meaning when used as actualizers of the precedent situation is derived from the background, encyclopedic knowledge of the recipient or explicated in the context.
Similar processes taking place in different countries may determine the synonymous nature of the respective derivatives. For example, the verbs panamizar and gibraltarizar bear the differential features of the precedent situation «colonization» in the economic and cultural spheres; derivatives vietnamizar, somalización, balcanizar, libanizar in their key value actualize a situation of «hostilities»; balcanizar and polonizar carry the meaning of «fragmentation of the state» and «termination of the existence of the subject».
The results of this study can be used in courses on intercultural communication and cultural linguistics.
Types of manipulation, use of manipulative techniques and methods of protection from this kind of influence are a well-developed subject in modern psychology. In linguistics, however, this field of study deserves special attention as hidden manipulation can be traced practically in any speech act. The article contains practical analysis of speech strategies employed by the participants of a political dialogue. It is posited that turn taking in a dialogue is an epitome of strategical planning rather than a technical structuring mechanism. The convergence or disparity of the strategies used defines the cooperative or conflict nature of the dialogue as well as the successful implementation of the goals set by the speakers. Among the wide range of turn-transitions, interruptions of a partner deserve the closest attention as they demonstrate the speakers’ attempts to grab or hold the communicative initiative. In this case interruptions can be viewed as ways to manipulate both the dialogue partner and in case of TV broadcasts the public opinion. The findings of the research can be found useful by students majoring in journalism as well as by those who study diplomacy and international relations because the ability to recognize the hidden intentions of a communication partner is the best method to protect oneself from being manipulated.
Business Chinese is a tool for trade and economic cooperation between Russia and China. During such interaction the lexical choice problem depending on the circumstances of a specific communication situation comes to the fore. This article deals with the business Chinese special words as a part of the lexical system of business Chinese. The author attempts to integrate Russian and Chinese researchers’ approaches to the classification of business vocabulary. The main kinds of word formation are described for words from the second part of the “List of the common business Chinese words”. 1422 words from the second part of the “List” became the subject of content analysis in order to determine the frequency of usage and relative frequency for word-formation elements. The author provides some ways of synonymic and antonymic rows formation, illustrates the specificity of polysemy and homonymy in business Chinese. The stylistic features of such special words as terms, neologisms, loan words, clichés, elements of Classical Chinese (wenyan), formulas of politeness, euphemisms are analyzed. This paper reflects the main trends in the development of business Chinese lexical system: the evolution of the words’ content plane in terms of words transition from the sphere of business communication to the wide usage and vice versa. The subject field of “entrepreneurial activity” is presented in the form of a frame system that makes it possible to model the sequence of word usage in business communication. The lexical choice in business Chinese is made by native speakers considering stylistic differentiation of words according to the status of the addresser and the addressee.
The paper attempts to describe a number of linguistic and pragmatic aspects of modeling the anti-Russian discourse in the English language media headlines. The authors focus on the coverage of the Skripal poisoning case and the specific language means employed by a range of English-language news sources, such as The Guardian, BBC, CNN, Politico, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, The New Zealand Herald, The Herald. The results of the study indicate that one of the most effective and widespread media manipulation techniques is misinformation accompanied by a discrepancy between the headline and the content of the article. The research seeks to classify manipulation techniques according to the way of their actualization in the language and the degree of misinformation: full fabrication, partial fabrication, manipulated content, selective quoting, false connection, emphasizing communication relevant elements by means of the actual division of the sentence. The implementation of such manipulation techniques is aimed at shaping public opinion on the incident at issue in order to promote a negative image of Russia and its leader in terms of their alleged involvement in the Skripal attack.
TRANSLATION STUDIES
The relevance of the proposed article stems from the scientific interest in investigation of different means of conceptual organization of knowledge in the process of production and interpretation of English and Russian utterances. Thus, it aims at establishing the role of aspect in English and Russian discourse through interpreting aspectual situations which are analyzed at the level of sentences and textual fragments borrowed from two translation versions of M. Mitchell’ s novel “Gone with the Wind”.
The theoretical framework for the research is provided by Relevance theory as developed in recent works on procedural meaning to handle H. Reichenbach’s symbolic logic for tense and aspect and Relevance theory proposed by D. Sperber and D. Wilson. We suggest that the following means are involved in expressing the type of action: a combination of lexical and grammatical properties of the verb; grammatical forms of the verb; meanings of time adverbs. These means are capable of characterizing R, a conceptual notion, which can be inferred by contextual assumptions.
Systematization of referential relations among the above mentioned components taking into account the influence of pragmatic interpretive component and contextual analysis of informational organization of discourse proves the hypothesis that referential characteristics being combined contribute to the description of a discourse situation as stative, habitual, inchoative or punctual.
The article will be interesting for researchers in contrastive and cognitive linguistics.
In the article devoted to the problems of training translators from Bengali into Russian and from Russian to Bengali, the author proceeds from the presumption that the basis of translation theory, which is a field of interdisciplinary research, lies primarily in the linguistic theory and the ideas that the structure and functioning of a language determine the choice of a translators’ training strategy. As a theoretical basis of translators/interpreters’ training, the author suggests using some components of the linguistic model created by I.A. Melchuk in the 1970s.
This theory, for various reasons, was not fully claimed, but its potential is so great that it seems possible to use many of its components, and the main of them is the system of so-called lexical functions. The approach allows to structure the lexical fund of both (foreign and native) languages and reduce the number of unmotivated lexical elements to a limited set of nouns, while other words can be considered as functions of these initial elements. In addition, the structuring of vocabulary leading to the minimization of the initial elements due to the selection and use of lexical functions, is particularly convenient and economical in the field of so-called political language.
LITERATURE AND LINGUOCULTURAL STUDIES
In the focus of the article are allusive elements (allusions and quotations) in two novels − Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes (Great Britain) and Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (USA) which are studied from sociolinguistic and comparative points of view in order to determine correlation between allusive elements used in the text and social status of an author/personage, common “core” of allusions in both novels and culturally specific types of allusive elements serving as signs of identity. Both contemporary writers have classical education at the best universities and socially belong to the classes depicted in their novels. On the material of two novels it has been revealed that allusive elements are proper to upper class speech, and literature abounding in allusions is aimed at the reader of the same social background. There were singled out different types of allusions common for both British and American novels and culturally specific allusive elements signaling the identity of the speaker. The comparative study allows one to see historical background underpinning culturally specific varieties of allusions as well as the results of sweeping processes of globalization.
The article analyses one of the functional features of the love motive in the works of Arturo Pérez-Reverte on the basis of his novel “The Old Guard´s Tango”. The plot and stylistic analysis of the text within the framework of the system-functional approach allows us to go deeper into the image of the protagonist via the author’s use of a love motive. Pérez-Reverte’s works are difficult to refer to any particular literary school, as his novels paradoxically but organically combine the features of postmodern literary aesthetics (hyperreflexion, intertextuality, load of allusions) and those of classical literature focused on narrative and reflection in the context of eternal values. Due to this genre polyphonic nature with expressed moral and ethical content and exciting plots, Reverte’s works cannot be fully attributed to “post-post-modernism” (the term used by N.V. Gladilin). The latter is characterized by the absence of moral and ethical problematic and plot clichés. In addition, all motives in Reverte´s works, including that of love, develop in a reliable historical context, elevating the images to the rank of deep human transformations. As the analysis demonstrates, the full-fledged development of the protagonist image is impossible without story’s recurrent love theme that develops like a spiral – each new story twist reveals the image in a new way based on the previous life experience.
The subject of the article is “間 ma” − one of the main concepts of the Japanese culture and its verbalization in Japanese.
Success in communication between representatives of different cultures is largely determined by the way they perceive spatial and temporal categories. Being culture-significant units, they play a special role in the process of speech communication.
Dualistic spatial-temporal nature of “間 ma” concept, its abstractedness, spatial and temporal uncertainty makes its adaptation to Western categories difficult, but correlate to the fundamental concept of emptiness in Buddhist metaphysics.
In the Japanese society an optimal relationship between an individual and the world around is being built on the basis of the “間 ma” concept. It becomes relevant in all spheres of Japanese cultural field: architecture, pictorial art, calligraphy, music, Japanese traditional performing arts, flower arrangement and garden design. A special attention in the article is given to the consideration of cultural and linguistic specifics of the “間 ma” concept, revealing itself in the semantics of linguistic units and largely determining the culture of Japanese verbal communication.
Perception of this concept encourages shaping of culturally oriented approach to language teaching and overcoming cultural distance in communication with the Japanese.
The article compares adjectives in Russian and Persian. Adjectives are considered primarily from a morphological point of view, and only then are analyzed from a lexico-semantic, syntactic and word-formative perspectives. Adjectives in the Russian language, unlike adjectives in Persian, have morphological properties such as case, number, gender, ending, brevity / completeness, etc. The absence of such morphological features in the Persian language complicates the process of studying parts of speech, and adjectives in particular. Therefore, in the first part of the article, more attention is paid to the morphological features of parts of speech in Persian. Then the adjectives are considered. Further, the features of adjectives in Persian and Russian are analyzed, opinions of both Iranian and Russian linguists are given. The article aims to answer a number of basic questions related to the peculiarities of adjectives in Russian and Persian. The conclusion contains the findings of the study.
The article is devoted to the establishment of the socio-cultural content of the basic value “Arbeit”/ work in the Austrian linguistic culture. As the main method of establishing the socio-cultural content of the basic value, a free associative experiment was used. It was conducted with linguistic culture carriers from May to July in 2018 in Vienna, Klagenfurt, Villach, Linz, Salzburg. It was found that the psychologically relevant core of the basic value “Arbeit” / work confirms the socio-cultural content of the Austrian basic value. Austrian respondents’ nuclear reactions include: Freude / joy (9), Anerkennung / recognition (6), Stress / large amount of work (6), Erfolg / success (5), Motivation / motivation (4), Geld / money (3), Spaß / pleasure (3). The reactions that are part of the core of the lexemе’s value in the Austrian linguistic culture are rather positive. Work in general gives the Austrian respondents joy and pleasure. However, they mention a great amount of work. The associates unambiguously update the components of remuneration for work and the receipt of mental benefits. In the nuclear and individual responses of respondents, obtained on the basis of an associative experiment, social and cultural features of work in Austrian society are manifested: for the Austrians colleagues do play an important role, not the work itself, many Austrians want to be self-employed and work for themselves, female labor is lower paid in Austria than male work, Austrian workers are highly qualified, and students have a qualified education that they strive to improve, Austrians complain about Stress / a lot of work. The fact that the socio-cultural content is manifested in the reactions of the Austrians may indicate the correct establishment and relevance of the socio-cultural content of the basic value.
This article is focused on a comparative analysis of sentences with detached coordinated attributes in the Russian and Persian languages. Detachment is one of the most common ways of complicating simple sentences in the Russian language. Detachment in the Russian language is realized by a change of a rhythmic structure and intonation of the secondary member of the sentence in order to give them a semantic and syntactic independence in the sentence. The conditions and ways of detaching the secondary members of the sentence in the Russian language, differentiation of simple sentences with detached members from complex ones, as well as translation of these sentences always cause difficulties for Iranian students. It is therefore necessary to conduct contrastive-comparative studies in this field. The novelty of the research is determined by the fact that for the first time the question of detached coordinated attributes has been considered in a comparative Russian-Persian study by drawing on translation of literary texts. The analysis is carried out on the basis of 70 examples, collected from various Russian literary works that have been translated into Persian. Our analysis shows that the use of the conjunction [ke] and the addition [ye / i] to the defined word in Persian are the most matching Russian detached coordinated attributes.
The short story “TV People” by Murakami Haruki and a pair of horror movies “Ringu” by Nakata Hideo came out in the last decade of the twentieth century and addresses the nineties’ situation of televisual permeation in the form of non-human figures coming out of the TV screen. Nakata’s films typify an updated version of a conventional ghost story, while Murakami’s text assumes unreality of another sort in the midst of ordinary life. As paranormal phenomena in J. Hillis Miller’s definition, the intruders of the space adjacent to the TV set in both cases affect not only TV watchers in the fictional plane but also film viewers and text readers outside of it in the threefold spatial dynamics. Although they differ in terms of the kind of fear they inspire or covertly insinuate, the works of two different modes foreshadow in tandem human dependency on information technology in the Internet age.
The paper presents the analysis of colour perception and its interpretation in psychology and symbolism; it highlights colour properties and the approaches to colour studies largely in linguistics. One of the features of colours is their ability to express human emotions and feelings, either positive or negative (verbally/ nonverbally), and to create certain atmosphere in the situation abound in colours. Shades of colours can be regarded as a lexico-semantic group formed by adjectives and nouns, which can be simple, derived, and compound words. Short texts include many colour terms expressing such colour properties, as hue, saturation, tone, lightness, intensity; each of them contributes to decoding of some culture-specific features hidden in Sudden fiction. The analysis of Sudden fiction shows that short stories have specific composition, where colour terms perform different functions. Descriptive functions are mainly connected with focal colours and identify objects’ properties. Other functions, such as character-generating, associative, metaphoric, symbolic, semiotic, and culture specific are more complicated. Their identification implies additional knowledge of cultural, social, and historical planes.
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